Graft Versus Host
by Meladracis
Summary: What if the Greys were Irkens, and the Irkens were Greys? How do the Control Brains keep Irken bodies from breeding? What if life found a way regardless? What if Dib found a fugitive Tallest who was fleeing the Empire because the unthinkable had happened... and how would that change Earth's history?


Couple things before you get started:

1. I only watched Zim up to about Future Dib, and only remember up to Hamstergeddon in all honesty, though I've been reading the wiki and stuff to supplement the ENORMOUS amounts of headcanon I have had since the show originally aired. I have all the episodes, but after headcanon starts there's no real turning back, even if it ends up conflicting with canon. So you'll all get a glimpse of what first-wave fandom was like, I suppose. Fun! :D

2. Since I'm terrible at comedy, this is a serious AU, because I was always very interested in the potential for that (and inspired by two fics from first-wave fandom: the love story Conquer Me and the extremely dark isolationist Going On).

3. I have seen X-Files up to about Season 4, though this takes place before that, I'm not sure when. Probably somewhere around Season 3. After Scully's abduction, and after we meet Jeremiah Smith.

4. I use real locations for the roads and such, I used to live behind Chatsworth Park, so you can look up the car ride on google maps if you want.

5. This fic was not solely written by me—half of it was written by Ghost, one of my lovers; and portions of Irken society are from Mouko and DustTraveller's excellent fics that stuck in my brain as deep deep headcanons.

.o.

.o.

There were ships in orbit.

There weren't supposed to be ships in orbit, let alone _Irken_ ships. They hadn't sent Zim any support, and _especially_ fully outfitted science craft. An Invader wouldn't have even _asked_ for those, their missions were given after all scientific craft had gone in and the science teams had submitted reports outlining the planet as desirable. Purple would know, he'd been _on _those teams before his height disrupted his career and moved him to Tallest status.

_There weren't supposed to be ships out here!_ They didn't even _have_ star charts of this part of the galaxy! Why were there ships out here? They can't have known he was coming, and they weren't new models, they were from years ago, they'd been stationed here a while.

Why were they here? Why hadn't he known? Was this... ?

Purple didn't have time to wonder as they opened fire, without even hailing his ship and warning him off. That was _not_ procedure, especially since _science vessels were never outfitted with weapons_.

.oOo.

There was a lot of activity tonight. Dib knew better than to go investigating a crash site, even if he knew where it was and could walk—he was thirteen, and his father worked for the government. He was in a delicate position, and needed to remain low profile. He was also the best observer the community had, being that he was so small and had access to such good equipment. He stayed at his post, the camouflaged tree platform, the dish of his receiver mottled like the leaf cover, his own form bundled against the desert cold. He stayed deathly still and pointed the dish and his camera at the streak of white light. He stayed calm when the white light engulfed the canopy, pulling down his welding goggles and the filter on his camera. He wasn't an amateur, he'd been to hundreds of sites. The Lone Gunmen even thought he was a college kid, for Christ's sake. Dib was too professional to panic.

Who knew his observation spot would be front row to a crash, though? Hell of a thing. He tried not to congratulate himself too much on his own timing; after all, he still had government cover-up agents to avoid. It was a delicate balance between staying long enough and staying too long and getting caught in a dragnet.

When he saw the figure stumbling through the trees, covered in what must have been blood and furtively looking back as though it expected to be followed, Dib nearly lost his cool. A Grey! A _fucking_ Grey, outside of an abduction! It was wearing some kind of electronic device on its back, a bit like Zim's, and looked like it had come pretty badly out of the crash. There was a piercing red arc of light, and it clumsily dodged, obviously panicking.

That was about when it occurred to Dib that, Greys being a _civilisation_, there was as much likelihood of them capturing their own, police brutality, and all that. He packed up quietly as he could, stashed his gear in his backpack, and started down the tree, staying out of sight while trying to keep an eye on the fugitive Grey. Was it an escaped experiment? It was bleeding blue, and it was more green than grey, its eyes purple in the moonlight. It was getting closer, and Dib couldn't say why he did what he did next.

'This way,' he whispered, and met eyes with it. There was no mind-scan, no nothing—just the terrified look of another being, in pain and panic, lighting on the face of a stranger offering help. Dib turned, and it followed him down into a gorge, under a rocky overhang, the both of them crouching there for what felt like hours, too absorbed in making sure they weren't followed to notice one another. Dib moved when he heard the sound of cars, and checked their exits. They still had a straight shot out of here, if they went down the hill and used the boulders as cover.

Dib motioned for the being to follow, and started half-climbing, half-sliding down the steep and dusty incline, though luckily it was wet enough that the dew kept the dust from displaying their position.

There were close calls, especially when they got further into the inhabited section of the park, but this end had been abandoned as the nearest neighbourhood had the kids that used it grow up, move out, and leave behind only octogenarian residents. Dib was just glad he'd come up here by himself, with a solid alibi in the form of a fictional friend he'd been using as cover for years. When they got to a parking lot, the Grey following him went over to one of the parked cars.

'Hey,' Dib had just gotten out his phone, and went over to the Grey. 'That's transport, but it's lock—'

The grey did something with a spider-leg, and the doors unlocked. With a spindly, two-fingered hand, it opened the driver-side door.

Dib put away the phone, got in, locked the doors. 'Ground transport,' he explained. 'That's the steering, and it needs a key to start.'

A (presumably different) spider-leg came out of the half-broken thing on its back, and started the car. Dib just tried to keep up.

'Okay, you have to release the parking brake, and reverse out of here.'

'Know how to pilot.' It was the first thing the Grey had said, and Dib was shocked at how normal the voice sounded. And that it was speaking English in a perfectly American accent. Then he was surprised that he was surprised.

'This is civilian transport? No navigation?'

'No,' Dib said, 'but I can tell you where to go. Take this road out.'

Dib was completely surprised at how easily the alien—_the alien!_—handled a toyota pickup. They had been on a nearly empty 4am 118 freeway for an hour, heading east, to where Dib knew was a haven. When they pulled into the farthest corner of the seemingly empty park road, the one the freeway turned into, Dib realised they needed to hide the truck.

'They'll track the plates, they'll find—' but when Dib walked around the back of the truck, he saw the plates were gone. Blank. No, not blank... he couldn't look directly at them. 'What did you do to the plates?'

'Tracking obfuscation.'

'...Oh. Right.' Dib stared blankly for a few moments, trying to process that the alien was thinking two steps ahead. He looked up the road, and realised they needed to get into the woods. The trailer was back there, he started to climb up the steep hill, grabbing onto roots. He didn't see the alien until he was suddenly being lifted by two of those spider-legs. He nearly panicked, realising it was all too easy to be fooled and that he was a kid, alone in a remote area, with an alien of a species known to do terrible things to kids.

But then he was set down, and the legs were retreating. 'Another craft coming from that way, we should hurry.'

...and then Dib realised that this alien had been scared, and was scared, and had turned to Dib for help—help which Dib had offered. There had been plenty of times the Grey could have hurt him, and didn't. 'Uh, so,' Dib said, as he started leading the alien through the woods. 'My name is Dib. Do you have a name?'

'Best if you don't know it.'

'Fair. I've got to call you something.'

'What's a human name?'

'Uh...' Dib looked back at the alien, wondering. He kept getting drawn to those eyes. '...Violet.'

.oOo.

Byers answered the door to the trailer, knowing there were extremely few who knew their location, but still wary.

But it was a kid, a kid wearing a backpack and dressed in serious camo.

'Hey,' he said, 'I need a favour.'

'Who are you?'

The kid blinked, and laughed. 'Oh, right, uh... I'm Dib.'

'Who is it, Byers?' came a voice. Byers raised a brow, then leaned back to answer, not taking his eyes off Dib.

'Dib.'

'Look, guys,' Dib hurried on, glancing into the woods. 'This is really important. I'd hide her but I'm thirteen—and she's, she's hurt pretty bad, and I think people are looking for her—well, I mean, we _know_ the government's looking for her, but I think there's some foul play and—I really need you to hide her.'

'Hide who?'

Dib glanced into the woods again, back at the three men. 'Look, promise me you won't freak out.'

'What did you find?'

_'Promise._ I promised her we wouldn't hurt her—because that's not us, right? We're always going on about how the government does that to them, right? We'd never hurt one, if we found one?'

'Found one what?' Langley asked, scanning the trees.

'An alien,' Dib said, looking down at his hands nervously. 'I was working a site and there was a crash, and she stumbled from the wreckage. She's hurt, and—they were shooting at her.'

'They?'

_'They.'_ Dib stressed, and saw the light dawn on them. 'And—and she says they're after her because she's—she's pregnant.'

.o.

.o.

Pronoun changes for Purple: Irkens have no pronoun genders, because Irkens don't have a concept of gender—and being that I'm a Francophone, I used 'he' as the 'genderless default' pronoun that Irkens use for everyone of their race. However, humans perceive creatures that carry eggs as being 'she', which is why Purple seems to 'switch genders' after meeting humans. There will be more on Irken concepts of gender later in the fic.

Personal pronouns: You may have noticed Purple's English seems oddly void and sterile—Irkens don't use personal pronouns (I, me) very often, which is in keeping with their poor sense of individuality (hence Zim's speech marking him as a huge anomaly—more on this later). Usually the 'I' or 'me' is implied, rather than stated; but more often, things are stated as fact in a passive voice (thing is acquired, thing is known) rather than the way humans word things as personal feelings in the active voice ('I think', 'I have').

On the title: Graft Versus Host is a condition where a transplanted tissue identifies the host body as foreign and attacks it.


End file.
